Combat doctor talks about medicine at the war front in Iraq

Navy doctor Cdr. Richard Jadick is a great admirer of Admiral "Bull" Halsey but disagrees with the statement "there are no great men." He said he met many during his tour in Iraq.

Artist Suzy Shealy, right, explains her paintings to guests at the Dine for the Troops fundraiser in support of the Independence Fund and Lt. Dan Weekend. Shealy began painting about six months after he was killed in Iraq.

Suzy' Shealy's painting "No Greater Love" came from a photograph taken in Iraq by her son Sgt. Joseph Derrick before he was killed in September 2005.

Suzy Shealy has turned several of her son's photos from Iraq into paintings which she has then had made into giclee prints which she sells, forwarding the proceeds to the Fisher House Foundation.

A number of oil paintings done by Columbia artist Suzy Shealy depict scenes her son Joseph Derrick photographed before his death in Iraq. They were on display at the Dine for the Troops fundraising dinner held in support of the Independence Fund and the Lt. Dan Weekend.

WTKS radio personality Bill Edwards emceed the Dine for Troops event and holds the microphone for U.S. Army Capt. James Howard. The special chair Howard uses is called an iBot and enables him to move over stairs and elevate to the same level as a person standing.

"Calling Home" is one of the photos taken by Sgt. Joseph Derrick while stationed in Iraq. After his death, his mother Suzy Shealy began to turn many of his phographs into paintings, selling giclee prints of them and sending the proceeds to the Fisher House Foundation Inc. in memory of her first-born.

Suzy Shealy painted "The Load We Bear" from a photo taken by her son before he was killed in Iraq in 2005.

Retired New York City Firefighter Danny Prince assists not only families of firefighters lost on 9/11 but wounded warriors and their families at military hospitals near Washington, D.C.

This painting by Suzy Shealy is untitled and comes from one of the thousands of photographs taken by her son, U.S. Army Sgt. A. Joseph Derrick, who was killed in Baghdad in 2005.

"Waiting ..." is a painting done by Suzy Shealy from a photo taken by her son who was killed in Iraq in 2005.

Sgt. Joseph A. Derrick was killed in Baghdad Sept. 23, 2005. At the Dine for the Troops dinner Wednesday, his mother Suzy Shealy shared the letter and plaque sent from the Embassy of the Republic of Iraq in "deep appreciation of his service."

Richard Jadick found in Iraq more courage than he knew existed in others — and himself

He’s given the talk numerous times, how many he has probably lost count. Yet, in recalling and recounting the days and nights he spent treating wounded Marines in and around Fallujah, U.S. Navy doctor Cmdr. Richard Jadick struggled a little while remembering one particular Marine he lost on his last day in Iraq.

Jadick was the guest speaker at Wednesday’s Dine for the Troops fundraiser for the Independence Fund and Lt. Dan Weekend slated for Sept. 14-17 in Beaufort.

“Lance Cpl. Demarkus Brown came to us with a split lip cut by shrapnel and I stitched him up,” Jadick said.

They joked with him and the young Marine, only 19, went back to his unit to continue doing his job. Two days later, Brown went down with a chest wound after his unit breached a house containing one insurgent with an AK-47 and numerous fragmentation grenades. Brown’s good buddy and one of the doc’s corpsmen, Hospitalman Third Class Kevin Markley, did what he could on the spot for Brown and hurried him to the forward aid station the medics had set up in a building right in the middle of the fighting.

Brown was losing blood fast when Jadick joined the fight. Four medics worked on the young Marine, but plummeting blood pressure, collapsed lungs and all the other complications that came with the wound had already done the damage and Brown died on the table, holding Markley’s hand.

It may not be the only death that grips Jadick, but Wednesday night the memory of Brown was tough and the audience could feel the pain, hear the agony, almost see the scene Jadick had set before them in the aid tent, it was so very quiet.

Jadick, whose specialty is urology, was not the usual candidate for a slot as the unit doc with a Fleet Marine Force going into a combat zone. That’s generally given, as Jadick said, to “younger, braver, thinner doctors.

But on a day when he was shuffling papers at a desk job for the Fourth Marine Expeditionary Brigade at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, N.C., he stopped by the offices of the division surgeon who was at that very moment placing and replacing the names of available surgeons to deploy with the units of the First Battalion, Eighth Marine Regiment — the 1/8 — to Iraq.

Jadick’s Marine officer background and subsequent deployments as a Navy doctor — plus the fact he did not get into the First Gulf War as a Marine — ate at him. And what he was doing “was boring as hell.”

That’s what he wrote in his book “On Call in Hell.” Like war, the fairly detailed account of what happened while Jadick was deployed with the 1/8 is graphic, untidy, heartbreaking and rewarding in the ways such events are. It highlights the more poignant moments of war — when sometimes wounded buddies carry worse wounded buddies to safety, when complete strangers need not communicate with words the needs of the mission.

And there was fear. Not just the fear of getting shot, fear of dying, fear of the unknown.

“Inside me welled up this other fear,” Jadick said. “This fear of failing.”

On the plane ride to Iraq with members of the 1/8, Jadick had the attention of a “massive gunnery sergeant named Ryan Shane.

“Sir, so you’re our new battalion surgeon,” Shane said. “God, that’s one job I wouldn’t want to have with the place we’re going.”

Jadick gave the room full of aging veterans, military wives and supporters of the Lt. Dan Weekend and the Independence Fund as much as he could before turning them back over to WTKS radio personality Bill Edwards who was emceeing the dinner.

Edwards introduced to the audience medically-retired U.S. Army Capt. James Howard, a real-life reason the Independence Fund was established and the Lt. Dan Weekend was begun.

Howard served numerous times in Iraq and was injured while training to become a Special Forces A Team leader in 2008. He now moves around in an iBot — a special wheelchair created by Independence Technology, a Johnson & Johnson Co., that allows its rider to climb stairs, go over curbs, and raise and lower the seat to speak eye-to-eye with people who are standing. They cost about $26,000 each and the Independence Fund provides one to each veteran it finds who needs one.

The 200 people in the room had already supported the efforts merely by buying a ticket to the dinner. As they entered the dining room at the Country Club of Hilton Head, guests also were treated to oil paintings of combat scenes in Iraq. They were not painted by a combat artist but by Suzy Shealy, the mother of a soldier who was killed in Baghdad before he could come home and talk about his photographs.

Shealy had never painted before, mostly stenciling and things like that, she said, but after her first-born son Joseph Derrick was killed and she received the box of his personal effects, she found the thumb drive he had asked for onto which he could load photos had been taking and never got to share with her.

He was killed in September and in February she picked up a brush.

“There’s over 600 images, some are really great,” Shealy said. “I just thought the images need to be shared and I started with NightWatch. After some reflection and prayer I decided to make prints and raise money for charities that serve veterans and after a while I had a two-inch stack of emails from veterans and families who saw my paintings and prints and were so appreciative of my sharing my son’s views of where he was.”

Shealy said it is a slow process to paint each image and she never paints the soldiers unless she has spoken with them and gotten their permission. There is no political statement in what she paints. They are just the war as her son photographed it.

“I feel the American public has been insulated from what our men and women have gone through,” she said.

“Some aren’t ready to talk with me yet,” she said. “I have to be in the right mindset to do those images and it’s very healing, as well.”

One particular painting was separate from others on display. A soldier bidding farewell to his fallen friend — “No Greater Love” — was begun on a Palm Sunday and completed just after midnight that Easter morning.

Dine for the Troops is just one of many upcoming events that will serve as fundraisers for the Lt. Dan Weekend. Events include bike rides, art shows, seminars, parades and a concert with the Lt. Dan Band featuring Gary Sinise of CSI-New York who will also be the grand marshal for Beaufort’s 300th anniversary parade. Sinise also played Lt. Dan in the movie, “Forrest Gump,” beside actor Tom Hanks. The funds raised help pay for travel and lodging for the veterans and their caretakers as well as funding iBots for veterans who need them. Go to the Lt. Dan Weekend site at www.ldw2.com

Jadick, the recipient of the Bronze Star with a Combat V for valor, is still in the Navy and is a urology resident at the Medical College of Georgia. His closing remark covered the room.

“We’re warriors come home who need our community. You are our family,” he said. “You are our heroes, too.”